


sing me no songs

by alchemystique



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 05:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3162980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valkyrie AU: Her sisters pay no heed to her flight overhead, and so none of them notice their comrade sweep the battlefield one last time - none of them notice as she scales higher and higher into the sky. None of them notice until she is gone, and for this Swanhwid is thankful. She has grown weary of this life, of this blood-soaked world that will die in fire and destruction, and as she breaks through the clouds she feels the inklings of freedom stir in her for the first time.</p><p>She does not return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sing me no songs

**Author's Note:**

> So, I kind of just bastardized some Valkyrie lore in order to write this - this in no way follows Nordic myth at all, I just like the vague idea of Valkyrie!Emma finding a soldier who just. won't. die. And she likes it that way. (Also Swanhwid, or Svanvít in Old Nordic, was a Saxo Grammaticus valkyrie-like character whose name roughly translates to "Swan-white" which I literally could not pass up, not even under threat of torture and death).

**_Sing me no songs of angels I pray  
For a Valkyrie found me in battle that day_ **

 

The battlefield is quiet, now, only the moans of the dead and the dying to quell the calm that has washed over this place of violent horrors, and her sisters kneel before their champions to offer them the same gift they have offered so many before. Swanhwid does not join her sisters, this day.

She has grown weary of this - this constant chaos, this reign of blood and sweat and dishonor - she has grown weary of the duty she has been tasked to perform as her sisters now do once again. There is no glory in the slaughter these men wreak, no heroics in their painful and pathetic deaths, and Swanhwid knows she will not find a warrior here today.

She does not leave her form - flies in great heavy strokes of grey-feathered wing across the charred land as these mortal forms rot on earth already tainted with far too much blood

The souls of the dead groan their weary last breaths, the Chosen grasping at the feathered cloaks of her sisters as they glow in the golden light of the new life they have been offered - in the light of Valhalla, the land she once found so magnificent and full. 

Her sisters pay no heed to her flight overhead, and so none of them notice their comrade sweep the battlefield one last time - none of them notice as she scales higher and higher into the sky. None of them notice until she is gone, and for this Swanhwid is thankful. She has grown weary of this life, of this blood-soaked world that will die in fire and destruction, and as she breaks through the clouds she feels the inklings of freedom stir in her for the first time.

She does not return.

\------

It is centuries before she feels the pull of her duty again. She has lived ten lifetimes in the time since she deserted the gods of Valhalla, and though she grows closer to mortal every day, she can't have aged much, in that time.

She remembers she was young, once, long ago - remembers the fledgling wingspan of a Valkyrie sent out to retrieve a champion, only to disappear into the heavens and emerge a young girl - barely old enough to be considered a proper woman, amongst the warriors for whom she had tended graves for thousands of years, and yet she drinks and dines and fights with them, and after a spell they find her to be welcome, if unnerving company. 

She grows older - marries a man who claims to have traveled realms, before, and she laughs and laughs and never explains why, though she tells tall tales of Valhalla, of Asgaard and a hundred worlds besides. 

He grows old while she blossoms into womanhood - her hips curve out as his bones grow brittle, her face sharpens as his eyesight fails him, and she leaves him before she can is forced to say goodbye - she spent so long around the abrupt deaths of fighters that she cannot bear to see a man rot from within, instead of without.

She does not marry again. Nor does she stay in one place overlong - as this world achieves it's own awakening, they begin to pay too close attention to her kind - no longer is she considered a guardian, now they call witch, name her skin walker - now she has become a threat, a harbinger, instead of a guide.

She forgets how to weave after the third century. By the end of the forth she is certain she's lost the Sight altogether. It has taken a long time, but slowly, Swanhwid has begun to think, and act, and age like a mortal being.

\------

It is in her travels that she first sees him, and the stirrings of her ancient curse rise up in her like a tidal wave. (A gift, it had been once, like the Muses of Greece, like the reapers of lore, but now they call it a curse, as though they understand anything at all of death. These mortals fear it more than any other thing, merely because they never truly experience it - what fleeting thoughts must they have in their final breaths, knowing that this is the end of things?)

He is the most beautiful man she has ever seen, with blindingly bright blue eyes and a smile like the sun. 

His name is Liam Jones, and he is an honorable man. 

An honorable man who dies too young.

\------

She cannot save him from the poison - it has never been in her powers to save men, only to carry them home - offer them salvation.

She offers him salvation, and he declines. 

Swanhwid does not begrudge him a final choice in the matter.

\------

The feeling is fleeting, the sense that her gift must be used once more, but another feeling takes its place.

It is the younger brothers fault. She has always loved the sea - dreamed of it, wished for it long before she ever left her sisters, painted vivid pictures in her mind of the blues and greens and greys and blacks of the ocean. Her sisters called her whimsical, but she always knew she was meant for something different - something far more important than chartering souls from one world to the next.

This soul calls to her own, as the sea always has - this soul cries out for her in a way no other every has. This soul is full of life - of anger and agony and pain and burning rage, it is _alive_ , and Swanhwid wants it for her own. 

His eyes are the same color as her visions, and the man has a death wish - without his brother, without his guiding star, he is awash in thoughts of little but retribution, and he risks his life at every turn in order to see his brothers murderer brought to justice.

Somehow, through no fault of his own, he survives every plight, every silly mistake, and Swanhwid keens and crows as she watches from afar, her wings stretching wide as she catches the same wind as the Jolly Rogers sails.

\------

And then he is gone.

No stranger to realm travel, Swanhwid tries to find him, but to no avail - the pull of his raging soul wanes until it is nothing but a dull ache in her breastbone, one she fools herself into thinking she can stand, until one day, the feeling falls away until all that is left is her. 

Valhalla has not changed in eight centuries, and when she returns it as though not a day has passed.

She forgets about the sea, and she returns to her duties, and eternities later she is called upon the battlefield alongside her sisters, her mind buzzing with a strange excitement, her heart beating a fierce rhythm in her chest, her ears filled with the sound of ocean waves. 

It is only once she has arrived, and the shrieks of her sisters slash across the sky, that she remembers Killian Jones.

\------

He is not among the dead, nor the dying, and for some reason this pleases her. She does not wish to share him with her sisters, and so she searches for him, taking to the sky to catch a glimpse of his jet hair or those bright blue eyes. It makes no sense - he is a man, and nothing more, and Midgard has passed through at least three hundred years since she last saw him, but the gnawing, bone-deep ache she feels can come from only one place. 

It is in frustration, on the second day of fighting, that she finally thinks to check the ships beached along the endless sandy graveyard, and it is there that she finally finds him. 

He is a mess of broken, mortal pieces - blood drying in caked patches across his face, his hair a wild mess, his eyes bloodshot, his left arm a bleeding, infected stub, the hand likely claimed as a trophy some time before. 

She sheds her wings, and pulls back the hood of her cloak, and is shocked to find the feathers that fall loose are stark white, but as she kneels beside him, her hair falling about her in wild disarray as the wind picks up along the beach, he clutches one feather between the fingertips of his good hand and gives her a wry smile, wincing at some injury that causes him pain.

"Hey, beautiful," he says, and their eyes catch and hold as she takes him in. "Are you here to offer me the pearly white gates?" He knows of her, though Swanhwid cannot fathom how. She never introduced herself to him, content to stay far enough away to avoid discovery, but close enough to observe. 

"You're thinking of a different kind of harbinger, I imagine," she tells him, and his grin is a bit bloody. She finds it difficult to focus on anything but the blood smeared across his lip - her body is aflame and she wants nothing more than to lick the stain from his mouth, to taste the life still beating in his veins.

"Are you attempting to tell me I'd imagined my guardian angel, all those centuries ago?" She wants to ask him about that, but instead her fingers flit to his wrist, curling softly just so around it, his pulse beating steady against her fingers in a violent dance of _life_. He is alive, and the most alive creature she has ever encountered, and she wants to _consume_ him.

"Not an angel," she tells him, and his eyebrow jerks in amusement even as he fights down a groan of pain.

"I'll just call you Swan, then, shall I?"

Her chest aches as he draws in a deep, shuddering breath, her brows furrowed. Her nod is quick and jerky and she suddenly feels every year of her life as if she'd lived it mortal - and yet, thousands of years do not compare to this moment. His eyes are so very blue, and pull her in just as the sea drags at the sand beside this war-torn ship.

"You may call me anything you like, as long as I may call you mine," she tells him, and his eyes gleam as his lips tic up into a terribly dishonorable grin. She doesn't mind it in the slightest.

"As you wish, milady."


End file.
